Letting rip
A novel, a voyage, and the art of being seen
Marketing, like the other publishing arts — Publicity and Editing — is wonderfully mysterious to me. Before my debut novel, Larchfield, I had never encountered it. Poets are not really marketed, publicised, or even, unless they’re lucky, edited. Marketing, after all, is only brought to bear on “products” that have commercial potential. So I have always been in awe — and frankly grateful — that my books have received any marketing at all. It means someone thinks they have actual spondoolie-worth! This is a thrilling prospect for a poet previously dealing only in poverty-adjacent entities like legacy and reputation.
Where I got confused, however, was in the overlap between book-as-commodity (yay!) and author-as-commodity (eek!). Because so much of myself is in my stories, it became dangerously easy for my sense of self to get tangled in whatever people decided were the marketable aspects of my work.
I am, for better or worse, an artist. That’s not a boast, but a statement of approach — to life, to work. With experience, I’ve come to see that my vision for the book is not always exactly the same as its commercial value (though hopefully the two connect). Other people are better judges of the market. But with Ocean, I wanted to share the vision that only I can speak for: the artistic vision, embedded in the story, that has shaped everything.
The sign campaign — small, handmade, emotional — is my way of connecting the art with the commerce. As I say, I worship the marketers: I’m thrilled that Ocean will be in shops and in readers’ hands. But the signs let me speak directly —not through blurbs or summaries (which are vital, but different), but in the language of feeling. They’re not there to ‘sell’ the book. They’re there to reach people. And if someone sees one and thinks, this story is for me — then I have connected, and that is all an artist longs to do.
My first sign, which ran on Instagram over the weekend, says, “You saved my life. Now what?”
Very simply, that’s what the book is about. What happens after you’re saved. What surviving really means.
I’ll be running more in the lead-up to publication. I hope you find them thought provoking, sometimes funny. I hope they connect with you, and even make you think this story is for me. They will be on Instagram, mostly — do follow me there to see them all.
“Strange, wonderful, compelling. It shows what a good storyteller can do when she really lets rip.”
Louis de Bernières — yes, the Louis de Bernières — offered this quote for Ocean this week. Naturally I have been floating ever since.
That phrase — lets rip — stays with me. It doesn’t just describe how I wrote this book, but how I began to live in the wake of it. One of the crew on the Biscay trip, a man who of course barely knew me, said across a restaurant table one evening in Baiona: “You’re a butterfly waiting to break free.” I had to excuse myself to cry in the loo. Not because I’m someone who often cries in public, but because I’m not someone who has often felt seen. I had spent years perfecting a façade — carefully composed, determined, functioning — and only recently realised that this very effort was what had been holding me back. That someone could see through it, kindly and without agenda, was overwhelming. At the time of the trip, I felt deeply trapped. I’m not anymore.
That voyage changed everything. And Ocean is the result — the book I wrote when I finally stopped holding back. Louis de Bernières, perceptively, saw that. His quote is that rare thing — brilliant for the book, and insightful about its author. Sometimes, people see more in you than you dare see in yourself.
It’s been a let-ripping sort of week:
I finished a new piece for The Observer — my first ever travelogue — based on the sailing journey that inspired the novel. Out soon!
The Financial Times got in touch. They want a piece too, about living on a boat. There may be photographers. (There may even be a tidy-up.)
I signed 400 copies of Ocean at Booksource, the book distributor in Glasgow. I made an Instagram reel about it — and didn’t die of self-consciousness.
I launched the first of my “sign campaign” images on Instagram. These are a new way for me to speak as the author — not a character, not a reviewer, not a summary — but me, holding a sign that says what the book really means.
As you may have noticed I’m alternating long-form essays and shorter posts like this one, to keep things sustainable as we head into publication. If you’re in the mood for a deeper read, you might enjoy revisiting a couple of recent Letters from a Poet — each one comes with a poem, an accompanying letter, and a recording to listen to.
Here are two you might start with:
🎧Unspeakable: Freud's Dora and the victims of rape gangs —how art transforms the unspeakable into something that demands to be heard.
🎧 The Poetry God — the very first Letter: on devotion, defiance, and the mystery of where poems come from
They’re made to be read more than once, or listened to when the house is quiet.
If you're new here, welcome. Monday Night Reads began as a place to serialise Ocean when it didn’t yet have a publisher. Now it’s a home for everything that flows out from it: poetry, essays, writer interviews, creative process, books and life aboard.
You can find:
The Letters from a Poet series (free, ongoing)
Interviews with Graham Linehan, Jenny Lindsay, and Gillian Philip (now for paid subscribers)
The full Larchfield serialisation (also behind the paywall)
And several long-form essays, free to all, like this one!
If you’re thinking of subscribing, the Friends of Ocean discount is now live: 20% off annual paid subs, for anyone who wants to come aboard. You can also buy me a coffee and say hello. I consume a lot of coffee writing these posts.
And for those of you who’ve come aboard as paid subscribers: a quiet thank you, and a small something from life on the water — including photographic evidence of a full-scale nesting situation in my kayak:
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